UK Nova closes after pressure from Fact's cyber cops...

One of the most popular British-based TV torrent sites, and one that regarded itself as being ‘ethical’, UK Nova, has been forced to shut down following action from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact).

As well as being only open to a limited number of members, unlike other torrent sites, UK Nova prided itself on not linking to downloads of material that was commercially available or featured on pay TV.

In operation for the past nine years, and run on a not-for-profit basis, UK Nova was aimed at ex-pats who were unable to see their favourite British shows and couldn’t access catch-up services like the BBC’s iPlayer.

One of the site’s admins, Roger Evans, said: "Our main concern always was to take an ethical stance and to do no harm to any revenue streams of programme makers or broadcasters. To ensure that happened we always had a strict policy that nothing available on DVD or premium TV channels would be available.”

Evans added: “Among the members of Fact are BSkyB and the Premier League and our first step was to take down links to their material. But Fact said every link was infringing and had to be taken down - which means it was acting on behalf of broadcasters that are not even members of the organisation.

“In nine years of operation we had never received a complaint from any TV channel. We do not believe Fact would have been able to bring a successful prosecution against us - but at this stage we have no money or resources to defend our case in court.”

Fact were also behind a recent court case against the man behind Surfthechannel, a site that linked to American TV shows and movies. Anton Vickerman was sentenced to four years in gaol for his part in the site after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud in June for "facilitating" copyright infringement.

Were you a UK Nova user? How will this affect your nefarious TV-downloading ways? Tell us all the things…

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7 comments

Ethical or not and no complaints or not it's still not permitted under copyright law so it's not much of a surprise really although closing down a members only site is a new one on me.
' and run on a not-for-profit basis'
I think this is the thing they are using to get rid of them, not for profit doesn't mean make no money, it means make no profit. As soon as ANY money is involved the companies are showing there is a financial reason behind it.
Just hope this doesn't spread

The answer is, instead of closing the illegal sites down, they should first provide a legal route to watch state side programs at the same time as the yanks, not 3 years down the line when UK gold's US Gold decides to air them. I don't object to paying, just to waiting! For as long as there is no option, these sites will pop up...

Regardless of whether or not there is a legal route to certain releases available on Nova, the issue is that rights holders will expect to have the option to monetise their intellectual properties in the future, should they wish. So whilst certain releases may not be available now, sadly Nova was still infringing copyright, despite there being no legal way of finding the material on offer.
It's clearly still a losing battle being fought by rights holders, as they will never be able to stop sharing, but their reasoning is certainly sound.